 After consecration and service in Spain, Sancho de Santa Justa arrived in Manila in 1767 to take up his duties as archbishop, which includedoverseeing the expulsion of the Jesuits. He was a native of Aragon and a member of the Society of Scholarum Piarum. In this address on the occasion of Charles III's 67th birthday, he expresses himself no friend of many of the Enlightment's ideas but a staunch supporter of the King, his economic policies, and especially of the newly instituted practice of free commerce in the Spanish empire. On the other hand, he rails against England, its foreign commercial practices, and its ascension as a maritime powerhouse.

The work is printed on “rice paper” (i.e., Asian paper probably from the mulberry tree) as was common in Manila during the period to ca. 1820. The typography is definitely provincial and plain, using only one decorative woodcut initial and no ornamentation on the title-page. The type is roman in a variety of sizes with a practice of using all capitals for emphasis.

The press on which this work was printed had been that of the Jesuits until Archbishop Sancho de Santa Justa carried out the king's order and expelled them; he then appropriated the press for his private use, as here. What had been only the fourth press to operate in the Islands, now with a new name, became the fifth.

Searches of NUC, WorldCat, and COPAC locate only five copies worldwide (three in the U.S., one in the U.K., one in Spain).

 Medina, Manila, 317; Retana, Aparato bibliográfico, 379. Recent marbled paper–covered boards (green and mauve stone pattern); red leather label on front cover. A few minor paper repairs to edges of a few leaves; a very few small pinhole type wormholes, not costing any letters; the brown spotting and staining peculiar to rice paper. Old, brief note lightly red-inked to title-page. Over all a very good copy. (33130)

“The Little British Seadog with theHeart of a Lion& the Constitution of a Bull Whale”

Bligh, William.A voyage to the South Seas undertaken by command of His Majesty for the purpose of conveying the bread-fruit tree to the West Indies in His Majesty's Ship Bounty commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh including an account of the mutiny on board the said ship.... Adelaide, South Australia: The Griffin Press for the members of the Limited Editions Club, 1975. Folio extra (36.3 cm, 14.25"). xix, [1], 150 pp.; illus.$125.00

Click the images for enlargements.

 Designed by Douglas A. Dunstan and printed with a ragged right margin, this folio is an “all-Australian” Limited Editions Club effort: The present production of Bligh's remarkable travelogue was designed, introduced, illustrated, printed, and bound all by Australians (and, as the club newsletter notes, Bligh spent two years in Australia). The text is introduced by Alan Villiers, a mariner and nautical historian; it is illustrated with20 line drawings printed in green and brown, one at the beginning of each chapter, and withthree full-page, full-color reproductions of watercolors by Geoffrey C. Ingleton. The endpapers offer the Bounty's rigging plan and a map, while the color frontispiece portrait of Bligh is a reproduction of the 1797 painting of him by John Smart.

TheGriffin Press, which did the printing, also did the binding: full beige homespun linen with a gilt-stamped brown leather spine label, with the front and back covers stamped in brown with two different ship vignettes done by Ingleton.

This is copy 733 of 2000 printed, signed at the colophon by the artist and designer.

 Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club, 494. Binding as above, in original slipcase and lacking the glassine wrapper; slipcase with one side sunned along top and a few small nicks to other side, spine label a little chipped at edges. Book clean and fresh. A very nice copy, with the prospectus. (35530)

 The TV personality, intellectual, and sought-after editor Clifton Fadiman introduces this edition of Joseph Conrad's second novel (first published in 1896), a story of isolation and love set in a tropical landscape.

The edition was designed by John O.C. McCrillis and printed atThe Stinehour Press in Lunenberg, VT, using monotype Bembo on creamy Curtis smooth-antique rag paper. Robert Shore contributed the12 full-page color illustrations, reproduced from his acrylic paintings by the Holyoke Lithograph Company. Of 2000 copies printed, this is no. 1412, beingsigned by the artist below the colophon and bound at the Sendor Bindery in full cream linen printed in an all-over brown and black batik pattern, with the title gilt-stamped on a brown spine label. The illustrated LEC newsletter is laid in.

 Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club, 486. Binding as above, in publisher's brown slipcase with paper label; minor shelf wear on box bottom and book spine edges, elsefresh and clean. (30563)

A Book of Daring Exploration — Discovery & Rescue in the South Pacific

 First Golden Cockerel edition of a dramatic New South Wales travelogue, part of that press's “Sea Series.” Captain Matthew Flinders, who led the first expedition to circumnavigate Australia, here describes a rescue mission to Preservation Island and the wreck of the Sidney Cove. The account is enhanced by Geoffrey Rawson's notes on Flinders, Bass, the Sidney Cove, etc.

Christopher Sandford designed, produced, and published this handsome volume, with the composition and presswork supervised by F.J. Newbery at the Chiswick Press. The text is illustrated with nine wood engravings done by John Buckland Wright and printed in dark green on pale green paper, as well as with a full-page map. This is numbered copy 414 of only 750 printed.

 Hall (1788–1844), a Scot, naval officer, and author of several accounts of voyages and travels including Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the Great Loo-Choo Island in the Japan Sea (1818), Extracts from a Journal Written on the Coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico in the years 1820, 1821, 1822 (1824), and Travels in North America in 1827–28, tells his correspondent that she is welcome to call on him on Sunday as she proposes, any time after 10:30 A.M. He gives detailed instructions on how to reach his house: It “is on the top of the Heath close to the Telegraph, which is a single Staff, a Semaphore.” He tells her he has finished making notes of her vol. II but has lent vol. I to another and does not yet have it returned to him.

As Hall writes that he will be easy to find because he is “about as well known here  though I hope in a different spirit  as in Yankee Land,” we date the letter to some time shortly enough after publication of Travels in North America for oblique reference to its angry reception there to be both natural and “fresh”; and, indeed, we wonder if his correspondent is American?

 Second edition, revised and enlarged. Combines the original three volumes (pub. 1974–83) into a single volume and incorporates additions made to the collection since 1983. The Hill collection, a gift to the Univerisity of California from Kenneth and Dorothy Hill, “remains the most extensive gathering of books that document early voyages of exploration and discovery in the Pacific (p. ix).”

With a wonderful biography of this great collector by his son (and distinguished bookseller) Jonathan Hill. The standard work!

 Second edition, asexpanded to include material on the Canary Islands; issued the same year as the first. Significant as anAmericanum, this has chapters or sections on Florida, New Spain, Chile, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Sinaloa, Culuacan, Puerto Rico, Veragua, the Yucatan, the Rio de la Plata, Zacatecas, Jalisco, and Brazil. Also there is information on Africa, including the Congo and Angola, and on Asia, principally Ceylon, Madagascar, and the Moluccas.

The author was the cosmographer and historiographer of the Dutch East India Company as well as the Dutch royal family's official translator.

This is one of the scarcest volumes in commerce of the Elzevirs' series of histories in the Respublica series. It is only the fourth copy we have had in our 30+ years in the antiquarian book business.

Provenance: Faded 17th-century inscription on title-page indicating the volume was a gift of P. Dupre to a school whose name we do not decipher.

Miller, Samuel. A sermon, delivered in the Middle Church, New Haven, Con. [sic] Sept. 12, 1822, at the ordination of the Rev. Messrs. William Goodell, William Richards, and Artemas Bishop, as evangelists and missionaries to the heathen. Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1822. 8vo. 48 pp.$250.00

 William Richards (1793–1847) and Artemas Bishop 1795–1872) were sent to Hawaii, while William Goodel (1792–1867) headed for the Holy Land and adjacent regions. Pages [47]–48 contain a “Brief view of the missions under the direction of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, compiled October, 1822.”

 Shoemaker 9489. Not in Hill. Removed from a nonce volume. Light age-toning. “No.7” in ink (early 19th-century hand) at top of title-page. (27260)

 This offering of Mutiny on the Bounty carries a short preface by the authors and an excerpt from the biography of Midshipman Peter Heywood, one of the Bounty's survivors, written by Royal Navy Lieutenant John Marshall, who in turn based his account on the private journal of James Morrison.

The illustrations are 16 full-page watercolors and 15 in-text monochrome line drawings by Fletcher Martin, who has also signed the colophon. George Macy designed the book using an intertype Garamond font printed at the Garamond Press in Baltimore, MD; chapter initials are printed in green, sepia, and orange inks. The binding is full brown sheepskingold-stamped on the spine with the title and a design of two cat-o'-nine-tails, and also on the front with a design (perhaps not coincidentally) of five surly-looking seamen. Top edges are gilt.

This is copy number 1157 out of 1500 printed.

 Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club 178. Binding as above, with the leather rubbed at spine and (lightly) at joints, gently refurbished; one small, very light spot to fore-edge not entering margins. In a slipcase slightly darkened in portions, sturdy and undamaged. (35465)

One of the Earliest Presbyterian Missionaries in OREGONAn EarlyACCURATEMap of Oregon's Interior

 Third edition: “A description of the geography, geology, climate, productions of the country, and the numbers, manners, and customs of the natives.” The Rev. Samuel Parker (1779–1866) accompanied a fur-trading party west into what was then known as either Oregon Country or the Columbia District, under the sponsorship of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Here he describes the voyage (including a brief mention of the Mormons in Missouri), the region's natural history, and the degrees of interest in Christianity expressed by the Native Americans his party encountered — which last was his primary focus.

The volume opens with anoversized,
folding map, engraved by M.M. Peabody, which Graff describes
as “the earliest map of the Oregon interior with a pretense to accuracy”;
includes an account of Parker'svoyage
to Hawaii and Tahiti; and closes with avocabulary
of Indian languages (Nez Perce, Klicatat, Calapooa, and Chenook).
The plate depicts “Basaltic Formations on the Columbia River.”

The First AustralianStar Catalogue —“Devoted to the Heretofore UnknownParts of the Heavens”(PRESENTATION COPY)

Rumker, Charles. Preliminary catalogue of fixed stars intended for a prospectus of a catalogue of the stars of the Southern Hemisphere included within the Tropic of Capricorn now reducing from the observations made in the observatory at Paramatta. Hamburgh: Printed for Perthes & Besser, 1832. 4to (25 cm; 10"). 20, xxv pp.$20,000.00

Click the images for enlargements.

 One has to say it plainly: this isa foundation work of Australian science and an important one for the history of world astronomy — the first Australian star catalogue. Christian Carl Ludwig Rümker (a.k.a. Charles Rumker, 1788–1862) was born at Stargard, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Germany; he studied to be a builder and passed his master builder examination in 1807 but abandoned that career for teaching mathematics. Two years later, he gave that up in favor of the sea and England, serving variously as a midshipman in the East India Company, a helmsman in the merchant navy, a teacher of sea cadets, and an officer on H.M.S.'s Benbow, Montagu, and Albion. His introduction to astronomy came while on Mediterranean service, where he made the acquaintance of Baron Franz-Xaver de Zach, an Austrian astronomer.

He published various papers and his work attracted favorable review. Captain Peter Heywood, under whom he had served in the Montagu, recommended him to Sir Thomas Brisbane, the newly appointed governor of Australia, and Rümker was engaged as the governor's private astronomer; he landed in Australia as a member of the Brisbane party. Once Gov. Brisbane's Parramatta observatory was completed in 1822 he began his work, and made significant discoveries, but friction with Brisbane caused him to resign; he returned to Parramatta in 1826, was appointed the official government astronomer in 1827, and continued thus through the end of the decade.

For his later life, quarrels, and achievements we recommend the fine article in the online Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Rumker’s catalogue of stars visible in the southern hemisphere had both a purely scientific aim and a practical one. The systematic study and cataloguing of the stars visible with the aid of observatory-based telescopy in the southern hemisphere was in its infancy in the 1820s: The Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope was established in 1820 and was the first permanent astronomical observatory in the southern hemisphere. Thus one can see the importance of Parramatta being up and working in 1822. On the practical side, Gov. Brisbane was a naval officer who knew the importance of the stars in navigation. Rumker’s work and his catalogue served both science and the Royal Navy, as he offered “Constants of Aberration and Nutation”; a “Comparison of my Observations with those made by La Caille”; and notes on “Double Stars,” “Magnitudes and Colour of the Stars, Nebula's, &c.,” and so forth — with the grand quotation of our caption being taken from his Preface.

Searches of NUC and WorldCat locate only nine copies in U.S. libraries.

Provenance: Presented to Alexander Dallas Bache, a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin and at the time of publication of this work a professor of natural philosophy and chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania: “Professor A.D. Bache / with the author's Compts.” in ink on the front wrapper.

 Miniature edition of the daily prayers Stevenson wrotefor the use of his family and their Samoan household members, with an introduction by Fanny Stevenson and a preliminary note by Ellen Shaffer (one-time head of the rare book department of the Free Library of Philadelphia and later the first curator of the Silverado Museum in St. Helena, CA).

This isone of 500 copies printed by Saul and Lillian Marks at the Plantin Press in Los Angeles; Mary Kuper did the wood engraving of a Samoan scene.